The Black Lotus - Video Covering a Historical Collectible

General
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I’ve been a fan of this creator for some time now. The care and craft he puts into his videos is refreshing. And I’m a sucker for this sort of quasi-video essay format. Thought I’d share. This is a long one, but the first 6 minutes cover some things I think this community would enjoy.

Channel - Rhystic Studies (previously known as MagicManSam)

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I watched this video last night and had to watch it again, lots of valuable content here.

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the bend test has got to be a meme surely

reminds me of using sandpaper to clean a card

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This is great. Actually informative and not 10 seconds of pointless transition music every minute like some videos of this style.

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I don’t appreciate any of my cards to be shown in this video without approval (two cards actually). Plus much of the info is inaccurate and/or time expired.
I sent an email yesterday and will update here when I get a reply.

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@garyis2000 Which cards did they use?

In general the video did a fantastic job explaining why collectibles retain value. Especially the quote towards the end:

“sneakers, magic cards, paintings, comics, art, luxury clothing, they all have the same core values; all luxury goods with perceived value that are worth a lot to some and a lot less to others. We are in magic and obviously the Black Lotus is this transcendence piece that represents so much to us, but at the end of the day its still a piece of cardboard”.

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As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t normally like to draw attention to my higher end non Pokémon stuff and rarely discuss them so I’ll leave that mild reference I made to stand;) I can promise you though, it isn’t luxury clothing lol.
With my Pokemon card, I hope to catch another if one ever comes along so I don’t want my own cards to serve as a barometer of value…either high or low.

Everything else about the video was informative and well done.

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Thanks a lot for sharing! I never collected nor played MTG, but this video was very informative to watch from beginning to end. Very well put together; the intro, history, and the information itself.

Greetz,
Quuador

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Awesome video I really enjoyed watching this :blush:

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I watched it yesterday before even seeing this topic. It showed up in my suggested videos, haha.
It was a genuinely good video with a lot of work put into it. Reminded me in part of smpratte’s
nostalgia video. How certain cards in the hobby are not just cards, but small nuggets of history.
Same goes for those baseballs, shoes and everything else seen in the video. It’s worth a watch.

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lmao you’re being ridiculous. He said that the BGS 10 Charizard sold at auction for $55,000, which is completely accurate and time independent. Just because you paid more for it in a private sale doesn’t invalidate that fact. Also, while you may own the card, you certainly don’t own the rights to the image that was used (PWCC, and perhaps ebay as well, does). Look up Beyonce’s or UC Davis’ story on trying to get rid of an image from the internet and determine if that’s really the side you want to be on.

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Streisand effect huh?

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Well then, ridiculous it will have to be then. Anyway, I wouldnt mind at all being on Beyonce’s side;)

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She looks like she’s breathing fire…just like my Charizard :joy:

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That was a pretty good video if you don’t know much about magic, the lotus or other P9. Some things that I was thinking when I watched it:

  • Don’t do the bend test, totally unnecessary you can determine if a card is fake without bending it, it’s an archaic test.

  • In regards to the reserved list and the promissory estoppel lawsuit if they broke it (it would 100% happen), the main deterrence for this now is the market cap of the cards on that list. Hasbro legal team isn’t going to risk breaking the reserved list if there’s a chance a successful suit (even if it’s like 5-10% chance) could bankrupt hasbro itself.

The rough market cap on just the alpha lotus’, ungraded and in LP condition provided all 1100 still exist (maybe half do) is already 16 million dollars. Add in beta and unlimited and you’re looking at 171 million dollars … that’s just for one card across a/b/u and doesn’t take into the exponential value of the many graded versions of these cards. I’ve not tried to work out the market cap for the reserved list but a conservative estimate would easily be over 4 billion dollars - hasbro’s entire revenue for last financial year. It makes it fairly easy for the legal team, break the list and reprint the cards and make a few hundred million vs get sued in a lawsuit that you could potentially lose with a market cap higher than the entire companies revenue. Seems like an easy choice - the way they’re going to get around this and let people play with the cards is via online play for sure.

  • Sad they used DJ as the sales perspective, he’s so small time and primarily deals with bulk.
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What a great video, thanks for sharing.